


Nothing Important Happened Today

by scullywolf



Series: TXF: Scenes in Between [189]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Baby William, F/M, MSR, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2019-11-27 22:32:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18199898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullywolf/pseuds/scullywolf
Summary: The bit at the end here (Frohike's message and the screencap) are from "All About Yves," the finale episode of the Lone Gunmen series.





	1. Chapter 1

(pre-episode)

One night. They get one night at home together before it all goes to hell.

It's not the most restful night, either. The baby is up every two hours to eat, and both Mulder and Scully have nightmares in between. Even so, months later, he will look back on this night of broken sleep with a longing so fierce it feels he might combust from it.

He finally decides after William's 5 AM feeding that he might as well get some water boiling (coffee for him, tea for Scully), and even bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, it is hard to remember a time he's been happier. This is the dream he never really allowed himself to want, a domestic sort of bliss he never truly believed himself worthy of, messy and imperfect but also somehow exactly right.

He almost drops the kettle into the sink when someone knocks on the door.

Instinctively, he reaches toward the holster he’s not wearing, frowns, and pads on near-silent bare feet to the door anyway. A wary glance through the peephole does nothing to set his mind at ease.

“What do you want?” he says quietly through the closed door.

“We need to talk,” is the muffled reply.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Maybe not. But you’re going to want to hear what  _ I _ have to say to  _ you _ .”

Clenching his jaw, Mulder unlocks the deadbolt but leaves the security chain in place, then opens the door just the small amount that the chain allows.

“And why should I believe anything that comes out of your mouth?”

“Believe me or don’t,” Kersh says. “But I didn’t have to come here. And if I walk away right now, the only person whose ass that saves is me.”

***

Mulder closes the door, and for a moment, Kersh thinks he might not reopen it. But he hears the slide and clatter of the chain being undone, and then the door opens once more. Mulder is standing there with the same defiant scowl on his face that he’s worn so many times before in Kersh’s office, only this time, the flannel pajama pants and bare feet make him look even more like a petulant teenager. It might be funny, if the situation weren’t so dire.

The temptation is certainly there, Kersh has to admit, to simply walk away. To let whatever Mulder has coming for him just take its course and have that be the end of it, once and for all. Under different circumstances, he might indeed have done just that. 

But what’s coming for Mulder won’t stop with him; Agent Scully and this brand new, innocent baby will be caught in the crossfire, and  _ that _ is more blood on his hands than he can stomach. Kersh may have no love lost for Mulder, but he is not a complete monster.

At length, Mulder moves to one side so Kersh can actually enter the apartment instead of standing out in the hallway like a jackass.

“Whatever you have to say, keep your voice down,” Mulder murmurs as he closes the door. “The baby’s sleeping.”

Kersh gestures toward the couch. “Mind if we sit down?”

“No, I think we’re fine right here,” Mulder says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You won’t be staying long.”

_ Arrogant sonofabitch. _

“All right, then. I’ll cut to the chase. Your life is in danger. You’ve got about 24 hours to get out of town before a chain of events is set in motion that no one will be able to stop.”

“I’m sorry, is that supposed to scare me? Maybe you haven’t noticed, but that’s not exactly new territory for me.”

“Oh, no? Then tell me, what does Agent Scully think about this cavalier attitude of yours, in light of the… new addition.”

At this, Mulder drops his arms and steps forward, getting his face right up into Kersh’s. “Don’t you threaten my son,” he practically hisses.

“That’s not a threat, you damned hothead, it’s a warning. A warning that you’ve got your head so far up your own ass that you fail to recognize the danger you’re bringing on them both by staying here.”

“Oh, and I’m supposed to believe that leaving them unprotected is a better plan? Thanks, but given how well that worked out the last time, I’m not making that mistake again.”

“They’re still alive, aren’t they?”

Mulder’s jaw muscle bulges, but whatever he’s about to say is derailed by the sound of another door opening in the apartment.

Kersh turns to see Agent Scully standing in the doorway to the bedroom, then quickly looks away; she’s wearing a robe over her pajamas, but even so, he is still her boss, and seeing her like this seems intimate in a way that feels deeply inappropriate. 

“Sir? What are you doing here?”

“The Deputy Director was just leaving,” Mulder says before Kersh can answer. 

Kersh levels a glare at him. “Actually, I think Agent Scully ought to hear what I’ve told you. Perhaps  _ she _ will have the sense to listen.”

“No, I think we’re  _ both _ done listening to your lies.”

He should have known it would be pointless to come here. Mulder was never going to listen to reason, especially not after learning about Kersh’s association with the very people he’s now trying to protect them from. 

The same people who will not hesitate to separate his head from his body if they find out he’s been here.

It’s this last point that keeps him from throwing up his hands and walking out; if he leaves without doing what he came here to do, the risk will have been entirely for nothing, and Alvin Kersh is not someone who puts himself in harm’s way for no reason.

“If I were trying to mislead you, don’t you think I would have contrived to do so by some means that you would find more credible?”

“You’ve never shown even the slightest interest in helping us before,” Mulder counters. “Why start now?”

It takes every ounce of restraint not to roll his eyes.

“What I have refused to do, and will never do, is validate your ridiculous claims about aliens. You are so quick to blame everything on little green men that you ignore, to your great detriment, the very real and very  _ human _ threats facing you. Especially now.”

Mulder scoffs. “There is nothing human about the men you were meeting in your office a few nights ago.”

“On the contrary. What you mischaracterize as alien is in fact the product of human science more advanced and more dangerous than you could possibly comprehend.”

This shuts Mulder up for a full two seconds. Then he shakes his head. “You actually believe that, don’t you? You really have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Mulder, can I speak with you for a moment?” Agent Scully says quietly from behind Kersh. “Alone?”

Mulder’s expression immediately changes, his eyes narrowing in concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, just… Would you excuse us a moment please, sir?”

“By all means,” Kersh says, without turning around.

With one more distrustful glare, Mulder stalks past him, and the two of them go into the bedroom and shut the door. Kersh, meanwhile, takes this opportunity to walk over to the chair in the living room and sit down. For several minutes, the only sound is a clock ticking somewhere nearby.

Kersh waits.

***

“I just think it's worth hearing what he has to say,” Scully whispers. “It's the only way we can hope to even guess as to what his true motivations might be.”

“We know that he wants me out of the picture, Scully. I don't think the 'why’ matters. I'm not going anywhere.”

“I know you're not.” She takes his hand and squeezes. His face softens, and he squeezes her fingers back. “But I still want to try and find out as much as possible about what we're up against.” She looks over at the bassinet. “If not for our sake then for William's.”

“Dana…”

“I need to know they aren't going to keep coming after him. That when they all walked away in Georgia, that was the end of it. Because if it wasn't…”

“I'm not going to let anything happen to him. Not to him, not to you, not to any of us.”

“Mulder…” She sighs. “We both know what they're capable of. We both know that's something you can't promise. Which is why it's all the more important to know whatever we can about what they want and what they're planning. That is the only way we will have any hope of fighting them. And while Kersh may believe the lie about their origins, that doesn't mean that the rest of what he might know about them is also untrue.”

“Unless by listening to him, we're playing right into their hands.” He shakes his head. “I don't trust anything that comes out of his mouth, regardless of whether or not  _ he _ believes he's telling the truth.”

“I don't trust him either. But I still think that we should hear him out first, and then decide what to do with whatever information he might give us.”

Mulder drops her hand and rubs his face. “I don’t like it,” he murmurs from behind his hands. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

Nothing has gone “how it was supposed to” since the moment she found out she was pregnant. Mulder disappearing for months and coming back “dead,” all of the questions and the worry, the doctors she should have been able to trust but couldn’t, and all of it culminating in a birth that bore not even the faintest resemblance to any of what she had hoped and planned for. She fell through the proverbial looking glass the day Mulder left for Oregon, and she can count on one hand the moments since then when her life has felt like anything approaching normal. 

And that’s even relative to the departure from “normal” that has characterized her life since the first time she walked into that basement office, nearly a decade ago.

She looks over again at William. If all of this turmoil is the price she has to pay for him, for his very existence, for the fact that however miraculous the circumstances surrounding his conception might have been, he is the product of a perfectly ordinary human union, then she will pay it without hesitation.

“Come on. We’d better get back out there.”

Without giving Mulder a chance to argue again, she opens the door. Kersh meets her eyes only momentarily before looking away uncomfortably. She’s not sure what he expected, dropping in on a new mother at 5:30 in the morning; no way in hell is she putting on a pantsuit right now. There is nothing immodest about her current state of dress, and if he has a problem with it, that’s on him.

Besides, maybe it’s a good thing if he’s thrown off balance a bit.

She walks to the couch and sits. “All right. I’m listening.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kersh leaves, closing the door behind himself, and Scully lets out a shaky breath. Without a word, Mulder gets up from the couch beside her and walks to the kitchen. She watches as he mutely goes about refilling the kettle and putting it on the stove, then puts both his hands on the countertop and leans forward, shoulders hunched. Even from across the room, she can see his jaw muscle bulging. 

They’ve both been given a lot to think about, just now. And if Kersh is telling the truth, they have precious little time to decide what to do, one way or the other.  _If_  he’s telling the truth. So much is riding on whether or not they believe him.

Unfortunately, Scully thinks she might.

The picture he painted for them is bleak. Terrifying. And it ends with a repeat of the scene played out a mere four months ago -- God, has it really only been four months? -- when she watched them lower Mulder’s body into the cold earth. Only this time, she will have their son in her arms. Tears sting her eyes and her breath comes a little shorter as the memory looms large and fresh. She cannot go through that again. She  _cannot_  lose him again.

“It feels like a trap,” Mulder mutters from the kitchen. “Like I’m not the real target, here.”

She blinks, then hastily swipes away the tear that has escaped down her cheek. “What do you mean?”

He pushes off from the counter and puts both hands behind his head. He turns slowly toward her.

“I stay, and they’ll stop at nothing to kill me. I stay, and I’m putting you and William in danger. But if I go, they’re just gonna leave you alone? End of story? I don’t buy it.”

It’s not that she disagrees with him. There are certainly elements of Kersh’s story that don’t sit entirely right with her, either. But if something happens to Mulder because they ignored this warning, she would never forgive herself.

“I can’t bury you again,” she says quietly. “I just… Mulder, I can’t.”

“But don’t you see? What if that’s exactly what they’re counting on? Send Kersh over to scare us into thinking that running is the only option, and then when I do… Scully, if I run, trying to save my own ass, and then something happens to you… something happens to  _him_ …” His voice breaks on the last word as he points toward the closed bedroom door, and he shakes his head. “I couldn’t live with it.”

“It doesn’t make sense, though. If they wanted to hurt me, or William, why wouldn’t they have done it in Georgia? We were defenseless, outnumbered. They weren’t going to have a better opportunity.”

She watches a shadow flit across his face at the reminder of how much danger they’d been in -- she knows he still blames himself for all of it -- but that’s not the point. The point is that they made it out of there unharmed, and without a fight. Mulder said it himself last night: whoever “they” are, William must not be what they thought he was. They’re not interested in him anymore. But if what Kersh says is true, it’s Mulder they’re after now.

“You think I should go,” he says quietly. 

“I don’t  _want_  you to go. God, Mulder, I’ve only just gotten you back.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. “But I can’t tell you how much it scares me to think about losing you again.”

“Yeah? Well I’m scared shitless about losing  _you_. So where does that leave us?” 

“I don’t know,” she whispers, and the kettle begins to whine.

He sighs, turning away from her and going back to the stove. 

***

The baby wakes up again just as Mulder sets the steaming mugs on the coffee table. Scully leans forward and begins to stand up, but Mulder touches her shoulder.

“I got him.”

_I’ll be the dutiful father, Scully. Please don’t send me away._

He frowns, unsure where that thought came from. Scully has made it clear she wants him around, that she’s only afraid for his safety. His subconscious, apparently, has some doubts.

In the bedroom, he carefully picks up the bleating little bundle and bounces him gently in his arms. The baby settles and quiets with the motion, and Mulder is struck with the simultaneous realizations that leaving is absolutely unthinkable, but also that he will do, without question, whatever it takes to keep this child safe.

Even the unthinkable, if it comes to that.

He still doesn’t believe Kersh, though he might have to accept the possibility that he just doesn’t  _want_  to believe. The fact that Scully seems to think the threat may be credible is starting to give him pause. After all, can he really trust his own judgement after he was so completely wrong about Georgia? For that matter, does it really make sense that these invulnerable superbeings would have to get him out of the picture if they wanted to come after Scully and William? As if his presence here is the only thing keeping them at bay? Even he has to admit that sounds a bit ridiculous.

The internal struggle must be showing on his face when he gets back to the living room because Scully immediately frowns and asks him what’s wrong. He gently hands her the baby and takes a step backward, shaking his head.

“I was just… thinking. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should go.” He swallows. “If you really think Kersh was telling the truth, and my staying here puts you and William in jeopardy, then… yeah.”

Scully nods but doesn’t answer right away. Mulder sits down in the chair opposite her and watches with his heart in his throat as she settles into nursing the baby. The thought of leaving her, leaving them, cuts as sharply as any pain he’s ever felt, but equally intense is the protective feeling surging in his chest. He will draw the threat away from them, no matter how much it hurts. 

With any luck, he’ll stay alive long enough to come back to them someday.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Scully finally says. She’s looking down at the baby, though. Not at Mulder. “But I can’t think of a reason for Kersh to lie about this. I think… I think we might have to trust him.”

Mulder nods, unable to voice his agreement aloud. Grief and fear and love tumble through him like stones pulled by the tide.

***

They rent a truck under her name and pay for it in cash. The storage unit he rented after his mother’s death is less than half full, so there should still be room for nearly all of whatever he might want to keep. Of course, given the deadline they got from Kersh, it is likely that time, not space, will be the limiting factor in making that determination.

When they get to his apartment, Scully is a little stunned to see how much is already in boxes. She knows he has been going through his things -- as well as things from his mother’s house -- for the past few weeks, but it is somehow still a surprise to see the place looking so different. She hasn’t been here since the first few days after he came back, and she shoves aside the sudden ache arising at the thought that this is it -- the last time she will stand in this apartment. Yes, he was already planning on moving out eventually, but they were supposed to have more time to prepare, to gradually let go of the memories infused within these walls. 

They were supposed to have more time, period.

“I, um, I got through most of the stuff in this front room,” Mulder says, gently setting the sleeping William’s car seat on the floor beside the coffee table. “Bookcase is the only thing left.”

He rubs his jaw, turning. “If you don’t want to deal with keeping the fish, I understand--”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Mulder. Of course I’m keeping the fish.”

He opens his mouth like he’s going to say more, then closes it again and nods. She returns the nod, welcoming the familiar protective feeling as her brain shifts into “productivity mode.” They have a task and a time limit, and that will be enough to keep her from breaking down, at least for now.

“I’ll get started in the kitchen,” she tells him, turning away to find a box. 

They’ve already decided there’s not much in the kitchen worth keeping; she will pack up whatever can be donated and give it to the charity shop affiliated with her mother’s church, and throw away the rest. It is easy to remain detached as she methodically packs up generic silverware and dishes,  or as she gives his old, stained coffee pot a critical look before setting it in the trash pile. The pots and pans have seen better days, but she deems them serviceable enough, nesting them in a box with faded dish towels layered between. It is only when she gets to the final cupboard, the one she’s been subconsciously avoiding, that she falters.

How many times has she sat on his couch with one of these mugs in front of her? (So many that they all blend together.) Sharper are the rare memories of mornings she awoke in his bed to find coffee waiting for her on the nightstand. Or that of the night they started with tea and switched to whiskey while she bared her soul. And there, in the back corner, is a mug he used to keep at the office. It’s one she bought him, a silly airport impulse purchase from early in their partnership. She didn’t even know he still had it.

She’s cradling it in her hands when Mulder walks through the kitchen doorway. “I thought this broke years ago,” she says softly, without looking up.

He comes to stand beside her, resting a hand on her lower back and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

“No, I brought it home after… when they split us up.” Now she does look up at him, and he shrugs. “Made me miss you too much, seeing it in the office every day.”

She sets the mug on the counter and turns, wrapping her arms around his waist, remembering all too well how it felt, walking into that office every day while he was missing. Remembering how something as innocuous as an old post-it note or half-empty bag of sunflower seeds was like a knife to the heart, when she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead. How things got both better and worse after she buried him.

_I hate this_ , she wants to say.  _Don’t leave me again._  

But she doesn’t, because if she says that to him, he will stay, no matter the risk. So she holds him instead, praying fiercely that this is the right choice. She has to believe that sending him away now is the necessary cost of getting to keep him, later. That she  _will_  get to have him back again, for good.

Because if it isn’t true, then what the hell are they doing?

***

It takes most of the day to clear out the apartment; it's late afternoon when Mulder prepares to close the door for the last time. Reflecting is as involuntary as breathing, and he lets himself take a moment. He moved in here straight out of the academy, what feels like a lifetime ago. No matter how many times he's imagined leaving this place, moving on, he never pictured it being like this.

Instead of a home with Scully waiting on the horizon, he's facing an indefinite period of uncertainty. Of running, hiding, looking over his shoulder just to stay alive.

_Whatever it takes to keep them safe._

And that is at the heart of everything, isn't it? His immediate future may be dark and scary, but he will face it without hesitation if it means protecting his family. If he gets to come back home to them at the end of it, so much the better. It is with this renewed sense of resolve that he closes the apartment door and goes to join Scully downstairs.

His phone buzzes in his pocket when he steps off the elevator, and he fishes it out to see a "new voicemail" notification. Pressing play, he raises the phone to his ear. It's a message from Frohike.

"Hey, man. Me and the boys have come across something you'll find very tasty. I can't tell you over the phone, but call me so we can meet some place out of the way of prying eyes, if you catch my drift. You can reach me at 240 555 0106. Later."

Mulder sighs. They still have to take the truck over to the storage unit and unload. He does not really have time to get wrapped up in whatever the boys have got going on. On the other hand, who knows when he'll get to see them again? And he  _could_  probably use their help in getting set up with some alternate sets of identification.

He makes up his mind to call back after he and Scully have returned the truck.

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit at the end here (Frohike's message and the screencap) are from "All About Yves," the finale episode of the Lone Gunmen series.


End file.
